According to a recent report by the College Board, SAT scores have fallen to an all time low since 2005. In 2005, the College Board introduced a new SAT that was meant to prepare students for the growing demands and competitiveness in the country’s top universities. This was the first time in over fifty years that the structure of the test had been changed. As the American college process enters a gradual reconstruction, the SAT is changing again after January 2016. Why is the test changing? Perhaps it has something to do with scores that have seen gradual declines in the last five years and have raised alarm among some colleges and other academic institutions and organizations.

The national average for the graduating class of 2015 was 1490 out of the maximum 2400, seven marks lower than the previous year’s class, as well as the lowest composite score. Also, there was a decline of at least 2 points on all of three sections of the test. Maryland schools are just under the average at 1462. These disconcerting statistics have stimulated a national conversation about not only the value (or disvalue) of standardized testing, but also the current state of America’s educational system.

Unimproved results on high school state tests taken by public school students across the country indicate that efforts at educational reform in the past decade, such as the “No Child Left Behind” campaign and the new Common Core curriculum, are not making drastic changes as expected. “Simply doing the same things we have been doing is not going to improve these numbers,” said Cynthia Schmeiser, chief of assessment at the College Board. “This is a call to action to do something different to propel more students to readiness.” So, then, is it the stagnant educational system that is causing these SAT drops? Or perhaps something more complex?

Experts who have been closely following the trends in score patterns have hypothesized that the drop the product of, at least partially, poverty, language barriers, and low levels of parental education and involvement. The gaps between scores of private and public school students demonstrate the correlation between wealth and SAT scores. Public schools in poorer districts Washington, D.C., that often do not prepare their students with necessary skills due to lack of resources, show much lower scores, than say, Sidwell Friends School, where the average student comes from a well-to-do family. In 2013, the District began offering the SAT and ACT to high school juniors and seniors for free; however, despite having nearly 5,000 students take the test, the scores have been also steadily dropping. In Virginia and Maryland, the number of students taking the SAT has stayed the same.​While national scores have dropped significantly, average scores from Bullis students have stayed relatively constant over the last five years, even increasing noticeably in some years. In this year’s graduating class, the Class of 2016, the average score of SAT tests taken before October was 1748, much higher than the national average. In fact, the 2015 score is nearly thirty points higher than the average score for the 2012’s graduating class. Evidently, Bullis students have not been following the trend of declining scores seen around the country.